


and with a little help from above

by Poltergeistreport



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Back to the Future Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, No betas we post like men, keith/lance is mentioned because I'm not an animal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poltergeistreport/pseuds/Poltergeistreport
Summary: A missed date became the least of Lance’s worries when Doctor Slav (PhD)’s latest invention left him stranded out of time.
Relationships: Lance & Lance's Father (Voltron), Minor Keith/Lance
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	and with a little help from above

**Author's Note:**

> Back to the Future fusion one shot. Something I mocked up for Lance Positivity Week on Tumblr and Lancemas. Based on the prompt ‘favorite movie.’ There’s no continuation to this. I just wanted to write time traveling Lance.

Despite dating a guy who looked like he was forcibly rejected from a **Stranger Things** set, Lance decidedly really don’t know anything about 1982 except ‘mullet? bad, _Guns and Roses_? good’. 

One thing he learned after an hour of landing in the past? He stuck out amongst the neon windbreakers, the leg warmers, the fannypacks, and apparently he was the one oddly dressed.

Everyone he passed on the street was giving him strange looks. A group of women with huge and stylized updos across the street kept glancing his way and then back and giggling to themselves.

Lance noted with a rising sense of delayed internal hysterics as he plopped down on a sidewalk bench, they definitely know he doesn’t belong here. Maybe even figured out he was a man out of time. And now they’ll call someone to take him away and lock him up until they torture the secret of time travel out of him. And he’ll never see his folks or his friends or who wins the 2029 World Series.

Cause he’s literally stuck in time. 

Oh man, Keith was going to murder him for missing their date. 

He took his head out from between his knees where he was starting to hyperventilate and patted himself on the face a couple of times. “C’mon McClain get it together.” 

First rule of when you were lost was not to panic, right? So no panicking. 

Second rule was what? Find help?

Lance will just need someone who knows how to get back to the future and how to interpret all the mumbo jumbo science stuff that Slav laid out about the Delorean and -

He can call Slav. Slav was alive in 1982. He was living here way before Lance was born. Slav built the damn thing and he would be the only one who knows how to get him back.

Lance took his phone out, glad to have kept it in his pocket before hiding the Delorean back at the freeway. 

But, as he spotted the “No service” on the thing, things are never that easy.

He tapped his phone against his forehead frustratingly. Right. Plan B.

The group of women across the street seemed to have gotten bored with laughing at him and moved down the street. As they moved away, Lance saw they were standing in front of an old school diner and in the window was a sign with the words in neat bold letters: “Phones here”.

Huh. Lucky.

\----  
The diner door chimed cheerfully as Lance stepped through. The place looked exactly like old diners do on tv. The booths along the windows were mostly occupied. One person was sitting at the bar counter bent over a notebook and a cup and there was a man with a very heavy moustache standing behind the cash register next to him. It’s more smoky than Lance expected though and he coughed and waved a hand in front of his nose as the smell of both stale and fresh tobacco assault his senses.

“What’s with the tight jeans, kid? You auditioning for Sandy or something?” the man, the owner possibly, called over. He stubbed his cigarette out in the full ash tray and watched Lance warily as he approached the counter. 

Lance ignored the comment and nodded in the direction of the sign he saw in the window, “You have a phone in here I can use? I don’t have any bars on mine.” 

The owner gave him a strange look, but hooked his thumb towards the back of the room where Lance can see, set into the wall next to the bathroom door, was a line of old timey payphones.

Oh. _R_ ight. 

“‘Kay, thanks.” Lance gave him a thumbs up and tried for an innocent canter down the hallway, but he can tell the proprietor’s eyes were on his back up until he ducked around the corner.

He picked the booth that was furthest down the line and away from the front of the diner’s line of sight. Still Lance tried to angle himself so no one passing by can see him fishing his phone and a quarter from his pocket.

He scrolled down his contact list until he reaches Slav name and deposited the coin into payphone, carefully dialing the number to the man’s landline. Slav doesn’t believed in the concept of a cell phone and his paranoia had made him exceptionally hard to get in contact with in the past. But his attachment to a landline phone was a godsend at the moment.

Lance still found himself waiting a while, listening to the ringing on the other end.

“C’mon, pick up, pick up.” Lance tapped his fingers against the booth’s plexiglass barrier as the phone kept ringing without Slav answering. When the call failed, he set the phone back in its cradle and listen to his coin roll down into the change slot for him to collect. And then he tried again.

And again. And again. 

_There is a 90% percent chance that the United States government is listening to all our conversations with the use of a mobile phone._ He can hear Slav’s lecture in his head. _But I am 50% more certain the person on the other end of a landline is a telemarketer thus ensuring I will never have to answer it._

Damn it Doc. Lance hung up and grabbed the quarter from the change slot. _There’s an 80% chance I’m going to live here forever now._

The door to the bathroom next to the pay phones banged open and its occupant left without giving Lance any mind. But the sudden motion made Lance look over and then he saw it. 

Salvation.

Leaning against the wall, protecting it from the bathroom door chipping the paint, was a phone book.

_Score._

Slav’s name was listed at an unfamiliar address. Without a working phone or internet, he’ll have to ask someone for directions. Lance doesn’t think anyone would mind if he ripped out the section from the yellow pages, so he took the information back with him.

He walked back to the front of the diner, page in hand, and addressed the owner. “Hey man, do you know where 86 Evergreen-”

“Are you going to order something or what?” The owner barked around another cigarette. “You can’t just walk in here doing whatever you want. You have to order something.”

“Oh.” Lance pocketed the clipping and took a seat at the counter. The only other occupant sitting there didn’t look up from scribbling in his notebook. “Sure. Can I get a water?”

“Water?” The owner scoffed “I’m not running this place for free, boy.” 

“Fine, fine.” Getting answers from this dick wasn’t going to be possible. Lance might as well sit, get his bearings and figure out his next step. He studied the old fashion menu hanging behind the man’s head. “Just give me a coffee. Sugar on the side.” 

The owner made a herculean effort to get a mug of coffee ready and then shoved it in front of Lance before grudgingly accepting the money Lance put down and went back to his place in front of the cash register.

Lance rolled his eyes and took a sip from his coffee. It was gross.

He stared down at this cup as he gripped his hair anxiously. He’ll need to find someone who can tell him how to get to past-Slav’s house. And then talk past-Slav into believing that he’s sincere and not a government agent sent to assassinate him. Past-Slav fixes the Delorean. Lance gets back to 2029. Pick up dinner from that place Keith likes as an apology. Ask real-Slav for a month vacation from house sitting so Lance can come to grip with the idea that time travel is real. 

“Hey! McClain!” Lance starts at the call and turns towards the entrance of the diner where a burly teenager stood glaring in his direction. Square jawed, low browed, and sporting a really unfortunate haircut, the guy was flocked by three other teens who were just as big and mean looking as their friend. All four of them looked like they can snap Lance’s spine into toothpicks.

 _Oh no._ Lance thought nonsensically, as the burly teen and his buddies stomped their way towards him, fists clenched and looking about ready to start swinging. _I’m going to die in the 80s. Taken out by a mullet and not in the fun way._

But the teen didn’t even look at him and Lance watched with wide eyes as he moved past him and grabbed Lance’s bar mate instead. Pulling the guy up by his lapels, the teen continued, leaning in menacingly into the guy’s face as he talked, “I told you a thousand times I don’t want to see you in here, worm.” 

He pushed the guy back into the stool and then grabbed him by the jaw to shake his head, “Did you get my homework done, McClain?”

 _McClain?_ Lance’s jaw dropped as he got a good look at his seatmate for the first time. No way.

No freaking way.

“Not yet, Hax.” the other boy let out weakly, “But I’m working on it and should have it ready for you by Sunday.”

Hax lets McClain go and crossed his arms. His friends, boxing them in, copied him like a group of dumb monkey-sees-monkey-dos. “Sunday’s no good. You know I sleep on Sunday. Drop it off Saturday,” He shoved a fist into McClain’s arm to seal the threat, “or else.”

McClain squealed and flinched away from the hit. “Y-yes of course, Hax! Saturday it is. D-don’t you worry about a thing.” 

Hax nodded, smirking. He then caught Lance’s gaping stare and the glower returned to his face. “What are you looking at, freak?”

His friends snickered and the one closest to Lance pulled at his sweater roughly, “Look at this, guy’s pants, Hax. Twerp, thinks he’s Olivia Newton John.” 

Hax snorted and turns back to his address his victim, feigning a faux concern look.

“Hey, McClain, your shoelaces are untied.” Hax pointed down at McClain’s feet and when the other boy reflexively looked downwards, Hax flicked him in the nose as retribution. “Made you look. Don’t be so gullible, McClain.” Around them his friends hollered like it was the funniest joke they heard. “C’mon guys, let’s get out of here before we smell like freaks and nerds.”

“Ha ha good one, Hax.” McClain rubbed his nose and turned back around to his coffee as the group filed out of the diner door behind them. His quiet “very funny” was muttered darkly to himself in Spanish once they were left on their own. 

Lance continued to try to form words. How the hell did he missed him earlier? He was the spitting image of his older brother, Luis.

Or, well, to be more accurate, Luis was the spitting image of him.

Javier McClain visibly figit and his shoulder came up to his ears as he started getting uncomfortable with the stranger staring at the side of his face. Finally he slapped the counter surface and swiveled back to Lance, letting out a: “What! Why are you looking at me for?”

“You’re Javier McClain.” Lance squeaked out finally.

Holy. shit. 

**Holy shit.**

Javier, his _**dad**_ , looks tiredly exasperated as he went, “Yeah? And who are you?”

Lance opened his mouth and then closed it. Ooh. How to answer that without breaking the universe and causing a rift in time, space and Lance’s entire existence.

“I’m uh-I’m--” 

“Say Sugar. Why do you let those boys get to you like that? You got to stand up for yourself.” A hand clamped down on Javier’s shoulder and a woman leaned in close. She was dressed in the diner’s servers’ uniform and had a friendly face. 

But to Lance’s entire shock he recognized her too.

Hard to forget the face of the town’s Mayor when she was featured in every paper and the town’s twitter page for the past half a year because of reelections next year. Younger and with less grey hair and lines, future-Mayor Rainar continued to scold his teenage father. “You need to make something of yourself, McClain. Them boys going to always treat you bad if you’re not anyone.”

“What like you?” the owner offered up from where he was clearly listening in. 

“Yeah, like me.” Rainar snapped back at her boss, straightening up, “You won’t be able to tell me what to do for much longer.”

“Bah,” the owner puffed on his cigarette and rolled his eyes, “What else are you going to do? You’re a woman.”

“Just you wait, Mister Lubos. I’m going to go to school and get out of here and make something of myself.”

Lance chirped enthusiastically, “That’s right! She’s going to be Mayor.”

Rainar snapped her fingers excitedly in Lance’s direction, “Now that’s an idea. Mayor Julia Rainar. That has a nice ring to it.”

“You know what else has a nice ring to it?” Mister Lubos sneered, “Paying customers waiting for their orders. Get back to the kitchen, Rainar and do your job. The one you are lucky to have now.”

Future-Mayor Rainar rolled her eyes when her boss turned around, but beamed at Lance,  
“Thanks sugar for that great idea” before taking his saucer and cup and walking them back to the kitchen for him. 

Lance clicked his tongue and shot a finger gun at her after her, “No problemo. You’ll do great. Right Jav-?” He spun around to address his dad only to see the vacant stool next to him.

Spinning around wildly on his own seat, he finally caught a glimpse of his teen dad outside the diner getting on a bike and riding off down the street. Shit, he must have escaped while Lance wasn’t looking.

“Wait!” Lance scrambled off the stool and ran outside after him, “Wait, da- I mean Javier. Hold up.”

But it was too late and Lance can only stand there lost in the middle of the sidewalk of a town, both familiar and foreign to him, and watch his dad disappear into the distant.


End file.
